


I Fell in Love Again (All Things Go)

by grasslandgirl



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Duck Newton Is Tired And Just Wants To Be Happy, F/M, I'm just filled with A Lot Of Love (and so is Duck), The Adventure Zone Amnesty Spoilers, The Adventure Zone: Amnesty, bandwagon here we come!!!!, mostly just stream of consciousness and internal monologue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 18:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20839694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grasslandgirl/pseuds/grasslandgirl
Summary: What happens to Duck Newton after he gets back home; a musing on the meaning of home and duty, and what you can do to find yours.---"He wants something familiar, something comfortable. He wants someone who knows him as well as he knows himself. Who trusts and respects him, who can understand and anticipate him, and someone he can match and return in kind. He wants a best friend he can love quietly and dutifully, because as he’s gotten older and settled into his life, he’s come to appreciate the stability of duty."





	I Fell in Love Again (All Things Go)

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!! juice really dumped minerva/duck on us out of the blue and then promptly dropped his entire ass essay on why they're incredible, huh? and now we're no longer people, just minerva/duck stans, right?  
sorry I'm just still reeling from that incredible finale and coming to terms with how much i utterly ADORE this ship that didn't even OCCUR to me til justin pulled it out at the last second! here we go......  
Title comes from the song Chicago by Sufjan Stevens

Duck Newton is tired. 

One of the things they don’t tell you about being a  _ Chosen One- _ not that there are a lot of things anyone  _ does  _ tell you about it- is how much it takes out of you. Duck Newton is 47 years old, he’s been a supposed Chosen One since he was 18, and last month he finally achieved his destiny. Duck Newton is still tired; just because you finish the destiny you’ve been hurtling towards your whole life, doesn’t mean life stops moving forward after it’s over. 

He still has a job to go to, and bills to pay, and a forest to protect- more than one, now. Duck goes to work, and talks to Leo and Sarah and Juno, and buys his groceries, and wanders his forest, and goes home. He misses his friends, the ones who went to Sylvain instead of returning back to Earth, but he doesn't blame them. He knows Aubrey and Thacker belong there, they’re needed in Sylvain, to help it grow and recover. Just like Duck is needed on Earth.

If being a Chosen One has taught him anything, it’s that everyone has a role to play. Everyone has a job, a duty; whether you believe in fate or not. 

The Amazon rainforest in Brazil is burning, and Duck wants to go. He has to go, it’s his job, his  _ duty  _ as a forest ranger; as much as saving the world was his duty as a Chosen One. He expects, for the most part, to go alone. Dr. Sarah Drake has her job at the telescope, Mama’s busy rehabilitating Amnesty Lodge, and Leo’s off doing god knows what with Indrid in his nasty old Winnebago. 

Juno agrees to go with him without hesitation, though, and Duck lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Over the course of saving the world, Duck got used to having a support system, people having his back and standing at his side. Being willing to go to Brazil alone isn’t the same as  _ wanting  _ to. 

Juno tagging along isn’t really a surprise, though, when Duck thinks about it. Other than maybe Thacker, Juno’s the only one who really  _ loves  _ the forest like Duck does. She gets what it means to breathe it, to feel it in her bones. She understands the feeling of standing alone under that great canopy and letting the sound of the birds and the wind and the leaves wash over you. She understands the pull Duck feels, to help one of the greatest and oldest forests in the world survive. To help it rebuild and prosper for future generations. 

No matter whether or not Duck is remembered as a Chosen One and a hero; he knows the trees will remember him, knows his legacy will live on for centuries, will shade the lives of future generations. It’s part of the reason he became a forest ranger in the first place. For a sense of permanence, a sense of meaning. 

So when Juno just nods with a knowing smile and a hand on his shoulder after he tells her he’s going to Brazil, Duck isn’t surprised. Relieved, but not surprised. 

Minerva, though. 

Juno understands his love of the forest, but Minerva understands  _ him. _ An after effect of their brain-tunnel, maybe, or from over a year of fighting side by side everyday. But Duck suspects it’s more than that. 

Or maybe he just  _ wants  _ it to be more than that.

She follows him back to Earth, after the fall of the Rehabilitation, but it’s not like there was much of a choice. She’d only briefly been to Sylvain. She knew nothing of the culture or the world, and only knew a few of the people- most of whom had lived on Earth for years. There wasn’t any way for Minerva to return to her home planet, and Earth was the only other home she’d ever known. Even if it had only been for a few months. 

So Minerva followed him back to Earth with Mama, while Aubrey and Thacker went to Sylvain, and though it hurt and Duck knew they’d stay in touch, he also expected everyone to kind of float in different directions. After all, there wasn’t any Pine Guard anymore, there wasn’t any threat to defend Kepler against. They could all move on with their lives, right? 

Minerva crashed with Duck for a few days after they got back, but he always expected her to eventually move on. Minerva wasn’t one for stagnancy. She was always moving, always training, always vigilant. It was how she’d lived her entire life. It was one of the things Duck loved about her. But without the Pine Guard, without having to fight abominations every other month, Duck’s life was pretty quiet. And while he liked it that way, he didn’t expect it to suit Minerva’s lifestyle. 

He’d expected her to move out, maybe even out of Kepler, to find new adventures, new fights; this time, without him. Duck didn’t want to admit how much that idea hurt, deep down in his heart, but he also wanted nothing more than for Minerva to be happy. She’d saved his life, after all, in a couple different ways, and she was one of the best people he knew. After everything, she deserved a life of whatever happiness she wanted. Even if it didn’t include him.

Duck had come to terms with that. With living his life without Minerva for the first time in nearly thirty years. But Minerva doesn’t leave.

She stays in Kepler- stays in Duck’s apartment. She stays  _ with Duck, _ in every sense of the word. She walks in the forest with him, goes grocery shopping with him, they go to dinner with Leo and Sarah and Juno, and despite how weirdly  _ mundane  _ it all is, it feels right. It feels, for lack of a better word,  _ normal. _

Duck went through the phase, in his teens and his twenties, of wanting a whirlwind romance. Something out of a movie or a book with someone who’d live and breathe and die for him; and with his destiny hanging over his head, Duck knew it was more than plausible. Duck went through it, and tried it, and lived it. Lived the passion and the breathlessness of love; and he learned that it doesn’t last. Things that burn hot and fast burn out quickly, and at this point in his life, Duck is tired. He doesn’t want passion or heartbreak or breathless declarations. He wants something familiar, something comfortable. He wants someone who knows him as well as he knows himself. Who trusts and respects him, who can understand and anticipate him, and someone he can match and return in kind. He wants a best friend he can love quietly and dutifully, because as he’s gotten older and settled into his life, he’s come to appreciate the stability of duty. 

He wants- and he realizes this slowly and all at once, he’s known it for years and has an epiphany of realization one day at breakfast, when it’s almost too late-  _ Minerva. _ He’s lived so long with her at his side, and with him at hers, that he can’t imagine his life without her. And not in the cliche, I-don’t-know-what-I-would-do-every-day-without-you-in-my-life way. Minerva has helped him grow and improve and change so much over the course of his life, even outside of their battles with the abominations and their work with the Sylphs in Amnesty Lodge. Duck knows that so much of  _ who he is _ stems from his relationship with Minerva, how they’ve pushed each other and believed in each other and trusted each other, again and again over the years.

He doesn’t want her to leave, and, almost as though she still has a tunnel into his brain and can tell what he’s thinking, she doesn’t. She stays in Kepler, stays in his apartment, and they don’t talk about it. They don’t have to.

And when the moment comes and Duck announces he’s going to Brazil to help with the Amazon conservation and rehabilitation efforts, there’s a moment of panic, a fear that Minerva will stay in Kepler without him, that she’ll take his leaving as the opportunity to set out on her own without him. That for the first time, they’re not on the same wavelength at all, and she doesn’t feel the way he does.

But he meets her eyes across the table, and she’s smiling and nodding. There’s no doubt, no hesitation in her expression; only the calm certainty of a new adventure spreading out before them, a new adventure she and Duck will take on side by side, as they always do. And the panic in Duck’s chest fades away as he smiles back.

Duck Newton is tired, and uncertain about the future. He misses his best friends, and he sometimes even misses his asshole sword. He has nightmares and he comes home from work dirty and sore and proud every night. Duck Newton still skateboards sometimes (he’s teaching Minerva) and swordfights occasionally (Leo still calls it ‘training,’ but Duck knows it’s just an excuse to get together and chat) and he visits Mama and the others at Amnesty Lodge almost every weekend he can. Duck Newton loves his forest and his friends and his home; and he’s learned that a home isn’t always one place. It can be multiple places, multiple planets, it can be people and moments and feelings. 

Home can be a  _ person, _ singular and unifying.

And Duck comes home to her, tired but happy, every night.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!! please feel free to check out my other TAZ fics- though the rest of them are from the Balance arc, atm- and reach out to me at @grasslandgirl on tumblr! comments and kudos are always appreciated, and please let me know if you have any constructive criticism, questions, or ideas for new fics!! thanks for reading xoxoxo


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